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Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

wpr.org

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Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#221

Post by rkomorn »

bluedino wrote: post #214
onionisafruit wrote: post #43

I’m having trouble with the football-field to acre conversion in this article. It talks about the complex being the size 12 football fields and the data center being 520 acres. I could believe it if those numbers were swapped and there was a 12 football field data center in a 520 acre complex. So I don’t know if they swapped the sizes of the complex and the actual data center or the author thinks football fields are…

For non-Americans, an American Football field is about 1-1/3 acres, a little smaller than a football/soccer field at about 1-3/4 acres

Not sure if serious because you're converting from football fields to acres, but the acre is another unit that non-Americans generally don't use.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#222

Post by macintux »

wat10000 wrote: post #172
eigencoder wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me give you an anecdote that illustrates why it was needed in Eagle Mountain, Utah. One of my friends works for the city there and he told me about how the development went down. When the city council first heard that Facebook wanted to build a data center, they shot it down solely because of Facebook's reputation. A year or two later, Facebook proposed the exact same project to the city council, while keeping th…

I wonder if they ever considered improving their reputations instead.

> Now keep in mind that a man's just as good as his word

> It takes twice as long to build bridges you've burnt

> And there's hurt you can cause time alone cannot heal

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#223

Post by DalasNoin »

whizzter wrote: post #116
DalasNoin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space doesn't seem like a good place to build datacenters at all. Cooling is going to be an enormous issue, how do you disperse of heat in a vaccuum? Radiators are very ineffective for cooling.

Cooling is the biggest reason for space datacenters, heat is movement of particles and vacuum being an absence of particles, so it's by definition cold. Naturally the system needs energy, the sun giving radiation convertible to electricity should enable that. Both parts are documented about ISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_system_of_the_Inter...

It's cold in a sense that is not very relevant. Your tumbler has a vaccuum layer because vaccuum does not transport or absorb any heat. you need those atoms to carry away heat.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#224

Post by irishcoffee »

basket_horse wrote: post #52
irishcoffee wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They neither directly create many long-term jobs or use copious amounts of water. If we haven't collectively established at this point that LLMs, data centers, "AI", "the next industrial revolution" are created and controlled by the wealthiest people in the world, and said people don't give a fuck about anything but money and power, we're hopeless. The elite don't care about jobs, or water. At all. If I were wrong, t…

> If I were wrong, the whole charade would have been shut down after LLMs convinced people to kill themselves. I hate this argument, and every time I see it in the news it feels like propaganda to me. Everything has risk. People have been committing suicide off google searches for years. There are thousands of fatal car crashes a year. Does that mean we should just abandon progress and innovation? Seems like a fragil…

Propaganda? Did people kill themselves at the direction of an LLM or not?

That's like saying ICE outrage is propaganda, and is, at best, insulting to the memory of those lost.

Brushing this point off seems more like propaganda than acknowledging it does.

LLMs are neat tools. They can do some neat things. Dynamite is also pretty cool, and it can do some neat things. How many more people need to get "blown up" by LLMs before we un-brainwash ourselves? At least one more I guess.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#225

Post by tzs »

whizzter wrote: post #116
DalasNoin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Space doesn't seem like a good place to build datacenters at all. Cooling is going to be an enormous issue, how do you disperse of heat in a vaccuum? Radiators are very ineffective for cooling.

Cooling is the biggest reason for space datacenters, heat is movement of particles and vacuum being an absence of particles, so it's by definition cold. Naturally the system needs energy, the sun giving radiation convertible to electricity should enable that. Both parts are documented about ISS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_system_of_the_Inter...

> Cooling is the biggest reason for space datacenters, heat is movement of particles and vacuum being an absence of particles, so it's by definition cold.

That absence of particles also means it is a nearly perfect insulator, with almost no heat transferred from the station to space by contact with space. No convection either.

That leaves cooling by thermal radiation, which is not a very good method.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#226

Post by almosthere »

gosub100 wrote: post #144
briffle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that argument, but a relative has been an elecrtrician that started out working mostly at the original facebook datacenter in 2016 or so. he now owns the business, and his single biggest client is still the facebook datacenter. Constant additions, reconfigurations, etc.

It's still contract work. When it's over so is your paycheck.

Construction is one of the jobs that's booming nationwide.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#227

Post by bell-cot »

buellerbueller wrote: post #76
bell-cot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are valid uses. McDonalds may not want Burger King to know they're planning to build a new location in Smallville, 'till they actually break ground, or vice versa. Don't blabber to everyone that the City wants to expand a park, so neighboring property owners will know to demand top dollar. Etc. But yeah - honest uses are pretty limited. Which limits we can hope will be tightly enforced by new legislation.

Tough shit, Mickey D's, that's the cost of doing business.

Smallville is entitled to a no-exceptions policy.

OTOH, if Smallville seems too unfriendly to developers, the latter may decide to build outside the city limits. Which might become a problem over time, by holding down Smallville's commercial tax base. Forcing the voting citizen to make unhappy choices between high taxes on their own homes, and Smallville having too little money to afford nice things that they want.

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#228

Post by simianwords »

gosub100 wrote: post #201
simianwords wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why does it attract investors if it is so obvious that it will fail? it is a ridiculous conspiracy theory you are trying to assert - musk comes up with an absurd idea that captures investor's attention. its not like he wants to make a good product, he just wants to fool investors. not only that, he fools them, gets the money and then puts said money into this venture that obviously won't work. why does he waste his t…

Because "investors" are a large group. Many of them are not involved in the industry and are clueless about tech. Same reason they invest in OpenAI, that hasn't made any money. Investors, both commercial and individual, often have more money than sense.

Do you think investors as a large group make enormous amounts of money on average?

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#229

Post by [deleted] »

imglorp wrote: post #10
bell-cot wrote: post #2

The most important news is in the subtitle - > Wisconsin has now joined several states with legislative proposals to make the process more transparent. Legislative or constitutional, good democratic government really needs limits on how much its supposed officials can do in secret.

It's literally "we the people, by the people, for the people". Except for personnel/employee matters, state and local government should be completely transparent with secrets explicitly forbidden. Secret deals with corporations is corruption.

[deleted]

Re: Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers

#230

Post by toast0 »

hrimfaxi wrote: post #12
hallway_monitor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't everyone know that dihydrogen monoxide can be lethal? https://www.csun.edu/science/ref/humor/dhmo.html

I can't believe this is still around. I remember printing this out to show my science teacher decades ago.

Of course it's still around. They're still putting this crap in schools!
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